Texting while driving is stupid. It's dangerous. It causes accidents and people get hurt, some even get killed. Yet Louisiana drivers and drivers throughout the country continue to practice that bad behavior at an alarming rate. State Farm recently released figures from a study they conducted about smart phone use while driving. The results of this survey might make you wish you could fly or at least wrap your car in bubble wrap.

State Farm Spokesman Gary Gary Stephenson told the Louisiana Radio Network,

"About 80 percent of drivers do say that sending a text is very distracting and 68 percent say reading a text is very distracting however that habit has not diminished very much at all,"

The disturbing fact about those figures is that over one third of driver's surveyed say they send and receive texts while behind the wheel. Even though an overwhelming number of drivers know that it's a distraction.

To make matters even worse, 77% of younger drivers say they believe they can safely text while driving. I would imagine that is why the insurance rates for drivers in that age group are so incredibly high.

How big a deal is distracted driving? The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says that 80% of all crashes are the result of a driver being distracted. When you consider that smart phones do so much  more than make calls and text it's no wonder any of us are still alive.

The good news is that more drivers are making the switch to a hands free device. That certainly helps a little with the talking and driving aspect of mobile phone use. Still many of these hands free users are guilty of sending texts, reading e-mails, and even browsing the web while behind the wheel.  The problems will only get worse as more and more drivers get smart phones. In fact smart phone usage has gone from 52% of drivers in 2011 to almost 80% of drivers in 2014.

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